Mike Pettine Jr.'s memories of his father/coach | Mike Kern

SATURDAY afternoon in Doylestown, a high school, a football program, a community and a family packed the Central Bucks West auditorium to pay tribute and bid their heartfelt farewell to an iconic figure.

They all did so with the understanding that a piece of the man who had brought them together would always remain with them.

Mike Pettine, whose 33 teams went 326-42-4 before he retired after a third straight unbeaten state-title season in 1999, was taken from us at the age of 76 on Feb. 24 as he was playing golf with friends near his winter home in Florida.

This Celebration of Life, which was mostly put together by Michael Jr., was meant to provide many more smiles/laughs than tears. And it succeeded, in a way that was hard to top. The ceremony, which included a treasure chest of memorabilia tastefully displayed in the gymnasium across the hall, went 90 minutes past the scheduled conclusion. In other words, as Junior noted, it lasted about the length of one of his dad's dreaded practices. But nobody seemed to mind. They became lost in the moment. And the memories, which everyone took turns sharing.

There were 12 speakers, including Pettine's grandson Ryan, a freshman at High Point (N.C.) University who saw his poppy for the last time two weeks before he died. The speakers spanned Pettine's three-plus decades with the Bucks, from Doug Shobert (Class of '68) to Bryan Buckley ('99), who became a Marine and was wounded in Afghanistan. Is there anyone from that part of Bucks County (or even beyond) who doesn't have a Pettine story? Well, nobody has more, or better ones, than his only son (he also left behind two daughters), who got to know him as a father, a coach, a mentor, a colleague, a friend, a foe and a confidant. It was some kind of a unique bond. And perspective.

"I don't know if I can put an exact time on it, but I knew pretty quick that he was just real important," said the younger Pettine, who played quarterback at West, lost five times in three years to the Bucks as the head coach at North Penn and became the head coach of the Cleveland Browns for two seasons (2014-15). "When he talked, people listened to him. I was a gym rat. He brought me to the school all the time. He would literally open a door, push me in one of the utility gyms, threw in a basketball and said, 'I'll see you in a couple of hours.' I just grew up there.

"I was being coached in every aspect of life, not just in athletics. I remember I was playing baseball, and he would get after me after a game or practice. And I just told him, 'Look, if you come to watch I'm not going to play anymore.' So sure enough, I get dropped off and about 20 minutes later I look out into this little wooded area and I could see through and I saw the paneling of our Country Squire station wagon, parked. He was spying on me through the trees. He was a coach, and that was really our relationship. Not just in sports. In everything else. I'll be honest. I didn't love it until afterwards."

Before the 1982 season, when the younger Pettine was a junior, he quit the team during a practice. His father wouldn't let him return until he apologized in front of his teammates.

"The guys who appreciated him the most were the ones that were the most combative when they played for him," Pettine said. "I was one of them. It's a phenomenon. I wasn't getting it in small doses like the other guys. With me, it was all the time. So the lines were very blurred. My mom (Joyce) was the referee. Dinner was so dysfunctional. She finally said we weren't allowed to talk about football when we got home. My dad was no dummy. He'd pull into a parking lot on the way home and get everything off his chest he needed to get off his chest. And I would listen and interject when I felt it was appropriate, which was rarely. Then we'd go home.

"You think about the things that were important to him, he just wanted his kids to model their lives by the standards he did. The issue with him wasn't necessarily the message. He was right like 99.9 percent of the time. The problem I had with him, being another hot-blooded Italian, I didn't like the way the message was being delivered. It took me a while to get that through to him. I was always looking forward to the day when it went from orders to advice.

"I've worked for some great coaches. But what I stand for, my structure, my style, my philosophy, the vast percentage I learned from my dad ... But it was frustrating never beating him. We might be the second-best team in the state, but we were the second-best team in our league (Suburban One National). I was 0-for-5. That's the universal trump card. There's no comeback for that."

He was taught well.

The elder Pettine wasn't a touchy-feely guy. He kept those feelings inside. But the ones who mattered to him knew. The gruff exterior was only one part of him. There was another side, the part most of us never got to see.

"He was a typical Italian dad," Junior recalled. "He wasn't big on hugs and kisses and 'I love you.' But he would tell everyone else. I'd run into so many people who'd tell me how proud he was of me. And I'm like, 'Really?' He always stressed it's about your actions, not your words. Talk is cheap. That's something he lived by. Don't tell me, show me.

"Of course he had a softer side. But he could rarely relax. Golf was his way to relax. He came up to my house (on a northern Ohio lake) last summer. Instead of 'Let's crack a beer and smoke cigars and sit here and tell stories,' he grabs my leaf rake and is out raking the backyard. I said, 'You're on vacation.' Then he decided the deck wasn't quite finished. So he's walking and stumbles, and used the rake to brace his fall, like a pole-vault thing. And he breaks it. But I didn't know that. Then he comes in and wants to make me feel bad. He hands me the rake and goes, 'Million-dollar house, 10-cent rake.' Of course, I found out later how he broke it. He could get his digs in. And he used the word 'baby' like an exclamation point. 'Sweat equity, baby.' Fortunately for me, I didn't inherit that trait. My joke is when I open my toolbox, the first thing sitting there is a checkbook.

"One day last fall my sister Linda wakes up at 6 in the morning because she hears banging outside her house (in South Jersey). My dad's on the roof of her shed. The roof was rotting, and he's trying to fix it. They were thinking about putting the house on the market. That was sweat equity. He loved to use that phrase."

And quite a few others, as was preciously documented on Saturday. Yet above all else he remained true to his beliefs, even if he did acknowledged on camera that his methods might be construed as going over the line at times by present standards. Maybe that's why he got out when he did. That, and to spend more time with his family, both immediate and extended, which he'd had to put somewhat on hold due to his commitment to the chosen profession.

"He told us his dad was tough on him," said Junior. "He was a longtime supervisor at a tire plant in Conshohocken. Hard-nosed, couldn't look at him sideways. Used to make him walk home if he didn't play well, threw him through the door once. But we never saw that. He was our poppy, who took us to get candy and was always giving us quarters. And (my dad) was the exact same way with his grandkids.

"He was a father figure. That was the one thing about retirement. He was there for everybody. If one of his players was struggling with something or needed help, he never turned them down. He didn't worry about scrapbooks. And the numbers are mind-blowing. But he wanted you to take those lessons you learned playing for West and put them to use in your life. That was his legacy. Jeff Trauger was a perfect example. He's a former captain who went to Brown and Temple Law and was just sworn in as a judge last fall (in the Bucks County Court of Common Pleas). My dad was there for the ceremony. That's what made him proud. So many of his players, so many that didn't necessarily take well to coaching, turned into coaches themselves. That's his legacy."

And it will carry on well into the future. The best things always do. Even if they occasionally had trouble actually joining the future.

"I took him and my mom to see 'Jersey Boys' for their 50th anniversary," Pettine said. "We went up to New York in a limo, it was a fun night. But at the first intermission, we had to convince him that they were actually singing live. I'm like, 'Dad, let me give you a football analogy. Broadway is the NFL of singing and dancing. It's the best of the best.' Finally he got it. And I think the one playing Frankie Valli at the time was a kid from Germantown Academy ... He truly did things his way."

Indeed. And those he touched were the better for it. I was among them. How do you ever repay that? Godspeed, baby.

kernm@phillynews.com

@mikekerndn